A new project wants to hear the untold stories of disability arts

Disability Arts Online is calling on people across the country to share their memories and experiences of the Disability Arts movement. It’s part of a major new heritage project, with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Cripping Culture: A Journey into Disability Arts Heritage is a new project that will save the stories of the Disability Arts movement from being lost and share them through an accessible digital archive, interactive timeline and podcast series.

(Cripping, like queering, uses a reclaimed word to apply a disability lens to culture.)

By gathering the stories and sharing them for anyone to access and engage with online, Cripping Culture aims to support the development of a culture that embraces disabled people’s stories and fills in gaps in existing knowledge.

Disability Arts Online would like to hear from anyone with a link to the Disability Arts movement and is asking them to contribute their own stories to the collection. These could be memories of an event, show or exhibition they attended, something they read, an artist they met, an organisation they were part of or anything else involving disability arts.

Contributions are welcome from people of all backgrounds including artists, writers, producers, performers, curators, musicians, activists or audience members.

By getting as many people as possible from all regions of the UK involved, Disability Arts Online hopes to capture previously untold stories and shed new light on key moments in the Disability Arts movement’s history.

Disability Arts Online is especially keen to hear from people who:

• Are part of the global majority.
• Have intersectional experiences of disability.
• Can tell stories from regions that are currently underrepresented in collections or narratives.

Share your disability arts story

To share your story, visit disabilityarts.online/cripping-culture and submit the online form. Contributions can be text, video, audio or photos that help illustrate your memory. The project wants to know how the memory or experience contributed to both your life and the Disability Arts movement.

You can share multiple stories about different events, projects, artists or organisations. These can be in English or British Sign Language. Disability Arts Online can offer access support for anyone who might require it to submit their contribution.

Colin Hambrook, Heritage Project director, said:

It doesn’t matter who you are, if you have a story to tell that involves disability arts in the UK, then we want to hear from you. Everyone who shares a memory will play an important part in the Cripping Culture project, saving our heritage for future generations.

It is important for the legacy of the Disability Arts movement that we capture stories of events from all regions of the UK that may have not been previously recorded.

We want to celebrate the vast breadth of disability arts activity that has occurred across time. Please help us share this call out far and wide.

Stuart McLeod, from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, said:

We’re proud to support Cripping Culture: A Journey into Disability Arts Heritage, a project that will safeguard and share the diverse stories of the Disability Arts movement.

Thanks to National Lottery players, this project will ensure that voices and experiences which have too often gone unheard are preserved and shared for generations to come.

By inviting people from across the UK to contribute their own stories, it will help build a more inclusive and representative picture of our shared cultural heritage.

The Cripping Culture contributions call out is open until Friday 14 August 2026.

To find out more about the project and share your story, visit disabilityarts.online/cripping-culture.

Cripping Culture: A Journey into Disability Arts Heritage is a three year project. It has received almost £250,000 in funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Featured image via the Canary